Saturday,
June 23 - For the last four years BL, EL, GK, MB, and JH have taken part in the
CSHFD's Annual Fluke Tournament. We
set out with the same crew again this year in search of our first prize
winning fish.
We
left dock at 5:30am and were at our first spot, buoy 15, just before
6:00am. We were there for about a half an hour and only had a
sea robin to show for it so we decided to head out east towards the Nissequogue
River. We were using bunker strips, spearing, and humboldt squid as bait
and a variety of bucktails and fluke rigs. The wind and current were so
strong that we had to use 6 ounce sinkers to keep our rigs on the bottom. We drifted over many different spots that produced shorts,
bluefish, and sea robins but no keepers. We kept at it and at around 9am
that we finally landed our first fish over 19.5". We spent the
remainder of the morning in that same area and caught another three good size
fish. I think I might have had the tournament winner on my line but just
as I was bringing it up to the boat, it made one final run and snapped my 25lb monofilament
leader. Next year I will be using 50lb test. At around
2pm we started heading back stopping at Eaton's neck and then in Lloyd Harbor
and caught another keeper and some shorts in those areas.
Once
we got back to dock we
put our fish on ice and brought them to the weigh in station. Our largest
fish was around 4lbs so we knew we would not take first place but there was a
small chance that we would place. Unfortunately the winning fish was 6.5lbs and the
third place fish was over 5lbs. Once again we were out of the money but as usual we had had a great time
and are looking forward to next year.
JH
View
from Nissy
View
from Nissy and giant pink bucktail that almost caught Tourney winner